You start by answering some questions.

1. Who is your Primary Target Audience? Is it teenagers with self esteem issues? Moms with kids under 5? Celebrities who think they’ve been abducted by aliens?
2. What is the age of your primary target audience? If they are hip, you need a hip site. If they are seniors, they need more hand holding in terms of navigation and a design with larger type size.
3. What ACTION do you want them to take on your site? Click ads? Call for advice? Use your service? Sign up for a subscription? Join something? Buy something? Crown you King of Uraguay or Queen of Egypt? Now think about what kind of content would inspire this to happen.
4. Are they males or females?
5. What other websites do they frequent? If they are football players they probably go to sporting goods websites.
6. Tech savvy or tech challenged? Educated, smart, average or bonehead stupid?
7. What is their income level? Do they live in a shoe with 5 children or a mansion with 12,000 square feet and haven’t seen their children in days.
8. Where will most of your audience come from? If the dollar is weak, will you need more traffic outside the U.S. to make up for a lame U.S. economy? (Not to imply that we, the U.S. could ever experience a lame economy.)
9. Are they most likely to google or use aol? MSN or yahoo? Certain groups use more of one than the other. For example, accountants do like yahoo because they use the yahoo financial tools.
   
10. Is what you offer a necessity or a luxury?
11. What will inspire them to use your product or service? Holding their pet hostage? A desire to look younger?
    
12. What are the benefits or highlights of your product to this market? What is it about your product or service that provides a solution to a problem for this audience.
13. **What is the effective way to speak to this audience? For example if their self worth hinges on the success of their child in academics, your content would be geared this way.